Friday 18 March 2011 08.53 EDT
First published on Friday 18 March 2011 08.53 EDT

Gavin coal power plant, Cheshire, Ohio 2003. Epstein says: 'In 2003, I was asked to photograph the erasure of a small town in Ohio. In Cheshire, houses were being razed by the hour and streets were nearly emptied of human life. American Electric Power, one of the world’s largest utility companies, had bought out the town and issued a gagging order to silence its residents, after increasing complaints that AEP’s plant had contaminated the health of Cheshire’s citizens. I was not the same after this trip. The cost of growth, with its implicit energy demands, had become terrifyingly vivid'

BP Carson Refinery, California , 2007. 'I had seen firsthand the grave results of fossil fuel production on human life and our ecosystem. To further examine the role of energy in the United States, I embarked on a five-year long, 25-state project called American Power. I photographed a consumerist society inured to the consequences of unbridled consumption. Many living in the shadows of power plants despaired their polluted water and air, but did not have the economic resources to relocate. Growth no longer meant progress but self-destruction,' Epstein says

Amos coal power plant, Raymond City, West Virginia, 2004. The prestigious Prix Pictet photography prize is awarded for the most successful use of photography to tackle social and environmental issues and comes with a £65,000 (CHF 100,000) grant

Iowa 80 truck stop, Walcott, Iowa 2008. 'American Power is an active response to the American Dream gone awry. My project focuses on the United States not only because I am American, but because the US has exported its model of unrestricted growth around the world in the form of mass consumerism, corporatism and sprawl'

Century wind project, Blairsburg, Iowa 2008. 'I included pictures in American Power of renewable energy – wind, biotech, solar – to show that a healthier, more economical and compassionate way of life is possible. American Power bears witness to the cost of growth; and it asks viewers to consider the landscape they have altered – and take responsibility for it'